Ion mobility spectrometers (IMS) have become a common tool for detecting trace amounts of chemical and/or biological molecules. Compared to other spectrometric chemical analysis technologies, e.g., mass spectrometry, IMS is a relatively low resolution technique. The IMS advantages of very high sensitivity, small size, low power consumption, and ambient pressure operation are in some cases completely offset, or at a minimum, reduced by the lack of sufficient resolution to prevent unwanted responses to interfering chemical and/or biological molecules. In a general sense, ion mobility spectrometers are currently used to separate components of a sample by differentiating their ion mobilities and/or ion mobility differences under given electric field conditions. Present invention describes differentiating components in a sample in an IMS using at least one additional property of the components besides their ion mobility and/or ion mobility differences.
The present invention is a broad-based method for the analytical separation of samples in general life science research, drug discovery and clinical applications. The invention can be used to separate chemical mixtures that currently require several chromatography methods such as HPLC, chiral chromatography, and ion chromatography.
The present state of the art ion mobility spectrometers lack the ability to perform a separation based on an additional property of the components to be separated in the sample other than the components ion mobility. The additional property of the substance (components to be separated) can be targeted for each substance and therefore the overall IMS separation can be tuned. It is the purpose of this invention to tune the separation in the IMS by using a substances additional property that affects their measured ion mobility.